Acer today launches the world's thinnest laptop, the new Swift 7 (SF714-51T). At just 8.98 mm thin, the new Swift 7 is an always-connected PC running Windows 10 that's designed for mobility, with an ultraportable design packing a powerful Intel Core i7 processor, all-day battery life and a personal, trusted 4G LTE connection.

"We're extremely proud to make the world's thinnest laptop even thinner with the new Swift 7," said Jerry Kao, President of IT Products Business of Acer Inc. "Building on the engineering breakthroughs from the previous generation, the new Swift 7 steps up the game with an even slimmer chassis, powerful performance and always-on 4G LTE connectivity for professionals on the go."

Acer today announced its new Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, designed for casual gamers seeking great performance in an attractive laser-textured design. Powered by Windows 10, the new 15-inch laptop is targeted towards mainstream users who enjoy the thrill of gaming with friends, and building their own network of like-minded players.

"With performance to effortlessly power mainstream titles, the Acer Nitro 5 houses essential technologies that casual gamers value most," said Jerry Hou, General Manager, Consumer Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "We've developed the Nitro 5 knowing that gamers want powerful specs to enable great experiences on the go. The new Nitro 5 is designed to tackle these needs and features a striking exterior for added uniqueness."

As part of Microsoft's "12 Days of Deals" push towards achieving more and better sales of Microsoft-branded products, the company has pushed a pretty hefty discount for its MR HMDs mere months after their release. The discounts see the Acer Windows Mixed Reality, Dell Visor, HP, and Lenovo Explorer take price-cuts of $200 over the base price, while Samsung's Odyssey HMD sees a much more level $50 price-cut.

With a move so close to holiday season and in the wake of steep discounts from Virtual Reality headset makers Oculus and HTC, Microsoft is pushing as hard as it can towards shipping enough units to build a new VR ecosystem. Consumers are the ones that stand to gain the most here, however. Though if you want to get your hand son one of these, be fast: the Acer and Dell options are already sold out, and the others' supply might also be inferior to the demand. So go there, and grab them while they're hot.

Acer introduced the PE320QK (full model name PE320QK bmiipruzx), a 32-inch (31.5-inch viewing area) monitor for graphics professionals. This monitor boasts of 130% coverage of the sRGB palette, and 95% coverage of DCI-P3, and 4K-HDR. Key specifications of its IPS panel include 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution, 60 Hz refresh-rate, 4 ms (GTG) response time, 10bpc (1.07 billion colors), 178° viewing angles, 350 cd/m², and dynamic mega-contrast ratio. Its thin-bezel design benefits multi-monitor setups. Display inputs include two HDMI, and one DisplayPort. Available now, it is priced at USD $1,199.

Asetek today announced Acer as a new data center OEM partner. Acer will incorporate Asetek liquid cooling technology into its Altos dual Skylake high performance servers (W2200h-W670h F4). Asetek will be displaying an example of an Acer server with liquid cooling at its booth (#1625) at SC17 in Denver, CO November 13-16th, 2017.

"Given their engineering and design expertise, we are pleased to have been selected by Acer as they incorporate liquid cooling into their next generation of high density and high wattage server designs," said John Hamill, Asetek Chief Operating Officer. "Partnerships with OEMs such as Acer are a key component of our strategy to develop the emerging data center market."

Acer's new Aspire A615-51G laptop is set to launch on January 8th. The A615-51G is 19.95 mm thick and sports a sleek and sturdy all-metal body. The IPS display measures 15.6 inches and has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. There are two models planned so far. The standard model comes with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor and a 256GB SSD, while the higher-end model features the more powerful Intel Core i7-8550U processor, 128GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD for additional storage.

However, the two models do have some characteristics in common. Both will come with 8GB of RAM and employ NVIDIA's GeForce MX150 graphics card with 2GB GDDR5 memory. The standard model will cost $825 approximately, and the high-end model will set you back $1000.

Starbreeze AB (NQSE: STAR A, STAR B) and Acer Inc. (TWSE: 2353, LSE: ACID) announce today that a new capitalization plan has been agreed for the StarVR Corporation - the joint venture for marketing and sales of the StarVR Virtual Reality (VR) headset. Under the new agreement, Acer will inject USD 5 million into the joint venture and increase its interest to 66.7%. Starbreeze will be relieved from its remaining capital commitment of USD 7.5 million and its interest will be 33.3%.

The joint venture, originally announced 25 June 2016, was created with a capitalization plan of up to USD 25 million to be shared equally between Starbreeze and Acer through capital injections on a set schedule. As of today, a total of USD 10 million has been injected into the company in equal amounts by the two parties. Under the new arrangement, Acer will provide a capital injection of USD 5 million into the joint venture. No further capital injections have been agreed, but the parties are proceeding in their support of the joint venture. As majority owner Acer will be able to facilitate future financing for StarVR Corporation should further capital needs arise.

Acer has introduced a new monitor to its line of offerings which brings a particular attention to design. The ED273 monitor features an eye-catching white and silver design, which looks at one time bold and elegant, and offers an interesting mix of features for the average user. The panel is a 27" VA, 1800R curved panel, which offers 1080p resolution, 60 Hz refresh rate and a 4 ms response time. Pair this with support for AMD's FreeSync (which every monitor should carry nowadays anyway), and the ED273 materializes as an interesting option for users that don't require higher resolutions nor breakneck-speed frames.

Being a VA panel, viewing angles stay at the usual 178 °, while brightness is a paltry 250 cd/m2, which means that users who expect to use this monitor in bright environments should be wary. Contrast ratio is being touted as a 1,000,000:1, and display interfaces include 1x DVI-D, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, and audio jacks. The Acer ED273 monitor is available from Newegg for $199.

Acer today announced new additions to its premium Predator gaming line, which include the Predator Orion 9000 series gaming desktops with Windows 10, its most powerful to date; and the Predator X35 monitor leveraging NVIDIA G-SYNC and Acer HDR Ultra technologies for ultra-smooth performance and stunning visuals.

Designed to intimidate enemies and inspire game play, the commanding aesthetics of the Predator Orion 9000 series feature a black-and-silver spacecraft-like exterior with customizable RGB lighting along the sides of the front bezel. A massive side window panel showcases the striking and powerful interior with a design that keeps electromagnetic interference (EMI) levels in check despite the size of the opening. Optional fans with customizable RGB lighting create a virtual light show for an even more arresting appearance. Outfitted with two handles and wheels covered with a carbon fiber pattern, the new rigs can be easily moved from one location to another. Tool-less side panels make component upgrades easy and the push-open top gives users a quick way to switch fans. A front-access headset cradle and cable management help keep the game area tidy.

Intel has just opened the proverbial lid on their 8th Gen "Coffee Lake" family of CPUs, which should bring about a democratization of cores for the masses. Acer has been quick to jump on the 8th Gen bandwagon, by announcing their new Nitro 5 Spin laptop, which brings with it the increased performance and "UHD graphics" of Intel's 8000 series of CPUs.

The Nitro 5 Spin is being marketed as a convertible, gaming-focused laptop, whose 15.6 1920*1080 IPS panel can be rotated to multiple locking positions through a 360º hinge. The gaming part of this laptop seems a little subdued - an NVIDIA GTX 1050 graphics card is confirmed to be on board - while memory configuration, and even the specific Intel 8th Gen processor inside, are still a mystery. The company also said that 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi will be par of the course for their new offering, and that we should expect this take on Intel's 8th Gen mobility CPUs to be available sometime in October, for a respectable $999.

It's confirmed: no 144 Hz 4K gaming with HDR in 2017 for NVIDIA gamers who want to make use of G-Sync t avoid screen tearing in their games. Acer last week announced that its 4K HDR Predator X27 gaming display would be delayed to Q1 2018 (meaning, no such thing below your Christmas tree or on your fireplace sock, sadly.) But it isn't Acer's fault, apparently: ASUS's ROG Swift PG27UQ, which features virtually the same specifications, has also been delayed to 2018. Both these monitors are based of an NVIDIA reference design showcased at Computex 2017 (you may remember a slight foul play there as well.)

The Acer Predator X27 and the ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ are based on AU Optronics' M270QAN02.2 AHVA panel, which offers a 3840×2160 resolution and can reach a 144 Hz refresh rate. Something that really should make these monitors shine is the usage of a direct LED backlighting system with 384 zones, which can be individually dimmed or brightened as needed, which allows the panel to deliver much higher levels of contrast, needed for true HDR display. At least until OLED panels make their way to high-performance gaming monitors, these are expected to be the best of the crop.

PC major Acer will be among the first manufacturers to deploy Intel's 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" processors on its products. The company's Swift 3 notebook, which is already open to pre-orders on Amazon, has one of its CPU options as Intel Core i5-8250U, as discovered by LaptopMedia, in an article. It goes on to describe the i5-8250U as a quad-core chip clocked at 1.60 GHz with up to 3.40 GHz boost, with 6 MB of L3 cache. This is particularly big for the ultra-slim notebook segment as the i5-8250U is among the first quad-core "ultra low power" ("U" suffix) SKUs based on a high performance core, by Intel. The listing doesn't reveal when the notebook will ship.

In a bid to increase options for budget-minded gamers, Acer has introduced the Nitro 5 gaming laptop, whose wealth of configurations start at a respectable $800. Choosing any kind of gaming-focused laptop over building your own desktop will always look like bad business, but how much one values mobility mays edge the decision towards one side or the other.

Specs-wise, it's a mix of respectable with the bare minimum: it features a 15.6-inch FHD IPS display, up to 32 GB of DDR4 2400 MHz memory, and is available in configurations featuring Intel's Core i5 or Core i7 processors paired with an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, or your choice of an AMD 7th-gen A-series FX, A12 or A10 APUs, paired a Radeon RX550 GPU. Some models will include PCIe SSDs (up to 512GB) with up to 2TB of optional HDD storage. Ports include 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 ports, and 1x HDMI output. The Nitro 5 also supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi with a 2x2 MIMO antenna. The Nitro 5 will be available in North America starting July 1. Acer did not release detailed pricing, so there's no idea of what the $800 configuration will net you spec-wise (though an AMD and RX 550 are pretty much guaranteed). The Nitro 5 will also be available in the EMEA in August, starting at a much less interesting €1,139.

Acer has added another entry to their Predator line of gaming monitors. The Z35P comes in to replace the company's now aging Z35, which boasted of a 2560x1080 resolution (which while relatively low for today's standards, I have to say I really enjoy.) The Z35P brings the specs up to speed with today's standards, with a higher resolution and a better contrast ratio than its predecessor. Its design reminds me of a running Flood infection form, honestly, but that may be just me.

The Z35P is based on a 35" AMVA panel with a 3440x1440 resolution (2.39:1 aspect ratio and 106 PPI), has a relatively low maximum brightness of 300 nits (no HDR support here I'm afraid), a 2500:1 contrast ratio, a 100 Hz refresh rate, 178°/178° viewing angles, a 4 ms response time, and a 1800R curvature. Reports indicate the refresh rate can be overclocked from 100 Hz to 120 Hz (with G-SYNC to boot), which isn't all that shabby. Connectivity-wise, the Predator Z25P features 1x HDMI 1.4 port, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 4x USB Type-A headers (with 1x USB-B input) and 1x 3.5-mm audio jack which drives the two 9 W integrated speakers. While in operation, the panel consumes up to 65 W of power. The Acer Predator Z35P is expected to be available in the U.S. in the coming weeks for $1099.99.

Microsoft has been slowly building up its mixed reality endeavor, by baking in support for the platform in its latest Windows 10 updates, as well as the recent announcements of actual HMDs from hardware partners like HP and Acer. Acer's solution, their Mixed Reality HMD, will ship to developers and customers with a $400 price-tag for both the headset and a pair of 6 DoF controllers, which easily remind users of HTC's Vive and Oculus's Rift controllers. Microsoft's implementation, however, makes away with the Rift's and Vive's ouside-in trackers, only needing to be within "sight" of the sensors on the front of the HMD to which they're connected, thus making them truly world-scale (if at the expense of some sweet swordplay moves, but I digress.)

Acer, a global leader in computer monitors, today announced the U.S. availability of the Acer ProDesigner BM320, a large 32- inch monitor producing brilliant 4K UHD (3840x2160@60Hz) visuals with professional-grade color. "We're pleased to offer this cutting-edge monitor primed to meet the high demands of graphic designers, film and video producers, animators and others who require optimum color precision and image quality," said Ronald Lau, director - stationary computing.

Outfitted with the Acer ColorPlus technology suite, the Acer ProDesigner BM320 ensures consistent color output in addition to sharper and clearer visuals. These technologies include built-in 100 percent Adobe RGB and 100 percent sRGB coverage for storing, producing and presenting a wide and accurate range of hues required for color matching across applications and print output. Providing the ability to adjust hue and saturation, 6-axis color adjustment lets professionals obtain the exact shade they prefer. In addition, super sharpness technology optimizes the quality of even low resolution images by slightly enhancing the edges.

NVIDIA is apparently working on some new iterations of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 GPUs for the mobile market. These new parts should come with lower clocks than the parts that are currently on the market, as a means for system builders to be able to reduce the profile and overall thickness of their laptops whilst still being able to keep a powerful graphics card at their heart.

The new GTX 1080 is the chip more details are floating about, with some captures from NotebookCheck showing all 2560 CUDA cores enabled, but lower clocks making up a much restrained power consumption. The 1290 MHz base clock (with an unknown boost value as of this point) points to a power consumption of just 110 W (compared to 165 W on the 1556 MHz base-clock GTX 1080; the new GTX 1070 should feature a TDP of 90 W compared to its previous 120 W fully-powered variant.) This naturally means a slower GPU - the new, revised GTX 1080 scored 17000 points on 3D Mark whereas usual implementations of the card score on the vicinity of 21,000. The change in power envelope, however, would enable new notebooks, such as the showcased Acer Predator 700, to deliver more performance than some of last gen's comparable thickness laptops. Its GTX 1080-powered 18.9 mm thickness in the leaked images allows for 600 points more than some previous-generation, 29 mm laptops.

At Acer's next@acer global press conference in New York today, the company unveiled the powerful and thin Predator Triton 700 gaming notebook. The notebook's svelte 18.9 mm (.74 inch), 2.6kg (5.7 pound) aluminum chassis houses a 15.6-inch FHD IPS display and best-in-class computing technologies, striking just the right balance of size and performance without sacrificing thermals, features or rigidity.

"Building on the highly acclaimed Predator 21 X curved gaming notebook, Acer is proud to announce the new Predator Triton 700, an incredibly thin yet powerful gaming notebook," said Jerry Hou, General Manager, Consumer Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "Our industry-leading AeroBlade 3D Fan with metal blades provides ultimate thermal performance, which allows us to pack massive computing power inside this ultrathin form factor without compromise."

Acer today announced two new 27-inch Predator gaming monitors that infuse the gaming experience with stunning visual clarity, vibrant colors, and remarkably smooth performance. The Predator X27 takes gaming to a new level with NVIDIA G-SYNC HDR at 4K resolution with a lightning-fast 144 Hz refresh rate, while the Predator Z271UV sports an 1800R curved panel and eye-tracking technology for intuitive gameplay.

Both monitors leverage Quantum Dot technology, offering a wider color range with higher brightness, deeper saturation and better accuracy to offer dramatically more vivid visuals with the Predator X27 supporting 99% of the Adobe RGB color space, and Predator Z271UV covering 130% of the sRGB color space. With a Quantum Dot film that is coated with nano-sized dots of various types that emit very specific colored lights, the new displays can produce a wider color gamut compared to standard monitors, increasing color purity and efficiency.

At Acer's next@acer global press conference in New York today, the company debuted its new Predator Helios 300 gaming notebook line. Available with 15.6-inch or 17.3-inch displays, its matte black chassis incorporates tasteful red accents, providing a slightly edgy, fun design. Shipping with Windows 10, it offers powerful features and technologies at mid-range price points, making gaming notebooks more accessible than ever.

At the heart of the Predator Helios 300 is an overclockable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or 1050Ti GPU combined with a 7th Gen Intel Core i7 (7700HQ) or i5 processor (7300HQ) for outstanding performance. All of this processing power is supported with up to 16GB of DDR4 memory (upgradable to 32GB), a speedy SATA SSD and a 1TB HDD. An access compartment doors on the bottom of the notebooks makes it easy to upgrade memory and storage components.

One of the things keeping OSVR from becoming a de facto platform for VR is that its software stack, being open source, still hasn't received as much development as Facebook's Oculus or HTC's Vive platforms. However, Sensics, one of the players which has put its stock on the OSVR ecosystem from the beginning, is aiming to gradually change that. Its recent introduction of the Sensics Home Suite brings, in itself, some much-needed quality of life improvements for any VR platform.

Acer today unveiled its high-end XR382CQK 38-inch monitor. This ultra-wide curved monitor with a curvature of 2300 R, serves up a native resolution of 3840 x 1600 pixels, with a response time of 5 ms, viewing angles of 172°/178° (H/V), 300 cd/m² brightness, and 10-bpc (1.07 billion colors) support. The display takes input from DisplayPort 1.2a, and HDMI 2.0, with support for AMD FreeSync technology over DisplayPort.

The XR382CQK features active blue-light reduction technology, a non-PWM method of controlling brightness (reduces LED flicker), "black boost," which improves contrast, and game modes (presets) specific to various game genres. Measuring 896.9 mm x 327.7 mm x 309.1 mm (WxDxH), it weighs about 10.71 kg. It supports VESA wall mount. Other features include a 4-port USB 3.0 hub including one type-C port. Available now, the XR382CQK is priced at USD $1,299.

NVIDIA today announced the G-SYNC HDR technology. An evolution of the company's proprietary adaptive display sync technology, which keeps the display's refresh-rates dynamically in-sync with the graphics card's frame-rates, G-SYNC HDR, as its name suggests, adds support for HDR (high dynamic range) displays. NVIDIA's partner display manufacturers such as Acer, and ASUS have each announced displays with this technology, which will will be available later this year.

NVIDIA worked with display panel maker AUOptronics to develop G-SYNC HDR. It leverages full 384-zone LED backlights, and a quantum-dot technology. The monitors rely on wide color gamuts, with 10-bit (1.07 billion color palettes) to bring HDR to life. G-SYNC HDR monitors come with support for the HDR10 standard. The year's most anticipated game, "Mass Effect: Andromeda," will come with support for G-SYNC HDR.

At CES 2017, Acer announced three new Predator displays that boast very high refresh rates of 200Hz or higher, while also featuring G-Sync support so as to improve your gaming experience.

The Acer Predator XB252Q and Predator XB272 displays are nearly identical: 1920x1080 resolution with a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz, G-Sync, and a low 1ms response time. As you might have already guessed, in order to achieve refresh rates this high, Acer opted to use TN panel technology, which makes the displays able to represent 100% of the sRGB color spectrum (which only amounts to 72% of the NTSC color gamut, but this is par of the course for TN-based panels). The only difference between both displays is that the Predator 252Q measures 24.5 inches and the Predator XB272 comes in at 27 inches. Acer equipped both displays with two 2W DTS speakers and a 4x USB 3.0 hub, and both the displays feature tilt, swivel, height, and pivot adjustments.

Many research firms' numbers have shown that VR product sales in 2016 have been weaker than originally expected due to both high product costs and lack of content. No-one has yet seen VR's killer app, after all, and I know I'd love to see another Halo-like product to drive awareness on the VR platforms like it did on the original Xbox.

All of the above lead towards Google's Daydream View, HTC's Vive, Oculus Rift and Samsung Electronics' Gear VR having all achieved sales that are not even close to previously-set market expectations, with even the current mainstream poster-boy for VR, Sony's PSVR, showing adoption numbers that are as lowly as low can be. Even in their home-field, Japan, a country known for being filled with tech-savvy and tech-crazed customers, only 0.7% of the existing PS4 and PS4 Pro user-base has made the jump for a VR headset.